With all the many forces in the world swirling all around you, do you sometimes feel weak and impotent?
Do you sometimes feel irrelevant? Not in control? Powerless? A helpless victim of "the system," or selfish and maybe ruthless people.
Do you harbor secret fears? Fears of the future? Fears of disease? Fears of accidents? Fears of so many things over which you have no control?
Does your life lack purpose, and are you just getting by day by day? Are you tired of all the mundane trivia that seem to demand all your time?
Do you lack energy, motivation, or drive?
Are you plagued with physical or emotional problems?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you need "the power." Actually, you need the power even if you answered "no" to all the above.
How would you like to have more power than the President of the United States?
More power than the Secretary General of the United Nations? More power than top professional athletes? More power than the richest person in the world?
Everybody wants some kind of power. It may be financial, political, social, intellectual, athletic, romantic, personal, or many other kinds.
Some of these kinds of power are available in varying degrees temporarily, but they are usually difficult to attain. In many cases it may take a lifetime, if attainable at all. Plus, when you get them, you realize that they did not produce the happiness you thought they would. In fact, they often bring great misery.
Then after all that effort, all of a sudden - poof! - theyare gone. As you draw your last breath, to your angst you suddenly realize that they were nothing but a grand delusion.
A good example of this is what happened to nine of the wealthiest men in the world, who once had great power. In 1923, a very important meeting was held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. In attendance were nine of the world's most successful financiers, men who had found the secret of obtaining worldly power. Now, decades later, let us see what happened to these men:
The president of the largest independent steel company, Charles Schwab, died bankrupt and lived on borrowed money for five years before his death.
The president of the largest utility company, Samuel Insull, died a fugitive from justice and penniless in a foreign land.
The president of the largest gas company, Howard Hopson, went insane.
The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cotton, died abroad, insolvent.
The president of the New York Stock exchange, Richard Whitney, spent time in the famous Sing-Sing Penitentiary.
The member of the President's Cabinet, Albert Fall, was pardoned from prison so that he could die at home.
The greatest "bear" on Wall Street, Jesse Livermore, died a suicide.
The head of the greatest monopoly, Ivan Krueger, died a suicide.
The president of the Bank of International Settlements, Leon Fraser, died a suicide.
Their power vanished, like vapor. As far as I know not one learned about the power described in this book. There is nothing wrong with wealth per se, but it is not synonymous with real power or happiness.
The Roman Empire spanned most of the known world and was one of the most powerful empires in history. But Roman power eventually crumbled and was reduced to dust.
Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich was a great, conquering power that swept through Europe in the mid-twentieth century. But in just a few years it was reduced to rubble and Hitler was dead, a suicide.
The Soviet Union was a gigantic world power but is no more. Its brutal dictators are all dead.
During the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union and a period in my U.S. Air Force career, I had great power at my fingertips. I was a Missile Combat Crew Commander (MCCC) in one of the first Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) units. In just seconds, with an order from the President, one simultaneous turn of our keys from our steel-reinforced Launch Control Center (LCC), 50 feet beneath the South Dakota prairie, and a 30-second countdown, my deputy and I would have launched ten nuclear-tipped missiles to rain total destruction upon our targets, vaporizing them (probably including some cities, but we were never told what our targets were). Ten missiles from many other LCCs would accompany them. Each missile was many times more powerful than what was dropped on Japan during World War II and each was capable of destroying a city. Thank God we never had to launch, but the deterrence provided by our capability and readiness helped prevent World War III. That was many years ago. Those old missiles and their warheads are obsolete now and are on the junk heaps of history. But all that nuclear power, combined with all the modern weapons of today, is nothing compared with the real power described in this book.
All human power eventually fails, because it is not real power. By the way, it was on missile duty that I began to think seriously about life, death, and the power described herein, and I began to study it.
Real power. There is only one kind of real and lasting power that at the same time brings joy and peace.
This real power does not eventually vanish like a vapor. It is a power that is permanent, and its effects are permanent. It is with you morning, noon, and night, forever.
This power is not natural, but supernatural. It is not physical, but spiritual. It cannot be measured in kilotons. But it is no less real, mighty, and greater than megatons.
There is a strange paradox about this special power: It is both totally free and also extremely costly. You cannot earn it, but there is a price to pay. I will explain.
Another strange thing is that this power is "promised" and guaranteed by the highest authority.
How can all this be? That is the exciting part!